18.02.08: Spicy Red & Black Bean

I haven't concentrated too much on listing Almost Perfect Recipes, but I'm pretty confident of this soup, which began as my twist on Dal Makhani on 16.11.07, continued on 03.12.07, and bridged Xmas/NewYear. So here goes (these quantities serve about 25):

For the mirepoix: 500g Onion, 500g carrots, 500g celery, half a dozen cloves of garlic, red pepper paste (biber salçası)
Main ingredients: 1kg red kidney beans, 750g black beans, 250g black lentils (urid/urad), 5/6l Marigold bouillon
Spices: ground cumin (jeera), chilli powder/cayenne, 50-100g creamed coconut

1. Soak the red and black beans overnight in separate bowls.
2. Start by rinsing the beans and boiling them in seperate pans, simmering for about 45 minutes, until soft. The black lentils (urid) should be boiled for about 20 minutes.
3. Roughly chop the mirepoix and sweat the chopped vegetables with the peeled and crushed cloves of garlic (add more if you like garlic) in a generous splash of oil in the bottom of your soup pot with the lid on, removing it every few minutes to stir the mixture and ensure it's not sticking. Let it cook down for at least 15 minutes.
4. Add cumin and chilli powder to taste: say, a couple of desserts spoons of jeera and not quite a full dessert spoon of chilli powder (add more if you like chilli).
5. Add the red pepper paste (biber salçası), which comes in sweet and piquant flavours. Choose the one you prefer and use as much as you like, but 200g is probably enough.
6. Add three quarters of the red and black beans, reserving some of each to add to the soup later, in order to vary the texture. Cover with four litres of Marigold bouillon and bring to the boil, simmering for ten minutes (so long as the beans are cooked).
7. Liquidise the soup.
8. Add the reserved red and black beans and the cooked lentils to the soup with another litre or more of Marigold bouillon (depending on how thick your soup is and how thin you want it to be) and return it to simmer.
9. Grate creamed coconut into the soup to thicken it and, perhaps, to balance the chilli. Again, the exact quantity is up to you.
10. Serve garnished with a swirl of fresh yoghurt.

Sorry about the lack of a photo (not even the new cliche blackboard shot). Wasn't really feeling myself today after a rough w/e and made this soup on auto pilot, serving 19 bowls and taking about £23 donations. Several of the soup suppers were similarly rough, so this hearty number went down well with all.

15.02.08: Spicy Lentil + Cafe Cairo

Find Cafe Cairo on MySpace

14.02.08: 'Greenland'

I forgot to mention and neglected to depict the freshly black-boarded panel on the font of the Pullens Centre, which prevents a certain person from knocking over our sign (or, once, turning it around to a notice written back in November that read, 'no soup today due to 'flu').

This week, it's felt like someone else - actually, a committee - wants to knock us, if not knock us out. This blog is purely about making soup and the politics of the Pullens Centre is kept out of it, but the outcome of the TRA meeting next Tuesday will determine if the Soup Kitchen closes at the end of the month. So, if you have a vote and value what we do, come along.

Carlo's girlfriend lives in Germany and it's Valentine's Day, so maybe that's why he was so spectacularly grumpy. When the Soup Kitchen sitcom comes on TV, nobody will believe his character. Or maybe he meant it and won't be returning to sling his distinctively smooth, curried soups - this one based on green lentils - before insufficiently grateful swine. Watch this space!

13.02.08: Minestrone

Life, say Kasia and Daisy, is a minestrone.
Although not, in this case, served up with Parmesan cheese.

12.02.08: Leek Y Potato

Today, I met up with Seba. and Olga at 9a.m. and we soon found out that we were too late for effective scrumping @ Nine Elms. What hadn't been picked up, already, had been swept up by the cleaners, who seem to be starting earlier these days. We found a solitary leek and some potatoes. Then we found a celeriac root with a few dodgy bits that needed cutting out and a bag of spinach that was on the turn. So, I thought, Leeky Potato (geddit) with additions. Except that I didn't have hardly any leek and not enough spud. See:

Back @ Pullens Centre, I got Seba. and Olga choppin' while I nipped down the market and scored another 3kgs leeks plus a quid's worth of big floury white spuds. We made the soup in the standard manner. Seba wouldn't believe that iceberg lettuce was a legitimate soup ingredient, but I shredded and sweated it down with the mirepoix, added the spinach that Olga had carefully picked over and sweated that, too. Then, we added the diced spuds and cubed celeriac, plus the shredded leeks, continued to cook for ten minutes before covering with a couple of litres of Marigold bouillon and cooking for ten minutes more.

We decanted several great big ladles full of soup into another pot and whizzed the soup up with Brenda the blender, slowly pouring in another litre of bouillon. Once it achieved a smooth-ish consistency, we amalgamated the chunky bits to make a good pot full of soup. "That's as much soup as we ever make," I told Olga, our new recruit, "about 30 portions". Turns out, we served 29 bowls and it was all gone by 2pm! Here's Olga & Seba. with their empty pot: